Ain’t No Mystery?

The mysterious Salt Fork fish kill is worrying residents, river-goers and anglers like Baron Owens, whose dad lives on a stretch of the river near Ponca City.

Months Later, Oklahoma’s Salt Fork River Fish Kill Is Still a Mystery

A summer fish kill in north-central Oklahoma is worrying anglers, river-goers and nearby water users. The Salt Fork River die-off was massive and, still months after it was reported, mysterious. Researchers and state authorities say they still don’t know who or what the killer is. Two fish kills were reported to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, records show. The first one on June 3, upstream near Lamont; the second on June 17, near Tonkawa. The two fish kills are likely related, so state authorities are investigating them as one event, officials from the DEQ, state Department of Wildlife Conservation and Corporation Commission tell StateImpact.“In the areas that overlapped during the kills, there is absolutely zero aquatic life other than turtles,” says Spencer Grace, a state game warden stationed in Kay County. Most of the Salt Fork’s large fish — including catfish like flatheads and spoonbills — died in the two fish kills, Grace says. The demise of these hardy fish is worrying and puzzling. Local angler Baron Owens says he watched a parade of 60-pound dead catfish float down the river. “They were all running up on the bank and dying, but the buzzards wouldn’t even eat them,” he says. “Buzzards will eat anything. I mean, it doesn’t matter. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen something like that. It’s crazy.” DEQ investigators took water samples from the river and sent dead fish specimens to a lab for analysis. The agency’s final report is pending, but preliminary results showed astronomically high levels of salt, says environmental programs manager Jay Wright.

“There’s no rain bringing freshwater in, so what’s in the lake or river just stagnates and concentrates,” Ray says. But Ray says drought alone doesn’t explain the record-high salt content recorded in the Salt Fork River. Strangely, each of the two Salt Fork fish kills followed rainstorms. “We had fresh water coming in,” says game warden Grace. “Also something else coming with it, either from on the surface or from below.”

8-9-13 On-Going Shallow Earthquakes, High Doppler Reflectivity and Fish Kills on Salt For River

Uncertainty brings rain and a whole lot more, not the other way around.  This time around, along with the earthquakes and rain, it probably decayed a hole in the Earth and released salt from below the river.  In addition to releasing the salt, they should check for low/acidic pH.  If those energetic particles ionize the salt (NaCl) you end up with HCl which will drive the pH down, also killing fish.  The turtles probably got the hell out of the water, otherwise they would be dead also. For those of you with a salt water pool and a Cl- generator it works under the same principle.

Godspeed